That's the thing... it really depends on which group you're talking about; so indeed, they definitely shouldn't be idealized. Some hunter-gatherer groups are very enlightened by modern Western standards, and some are quite the opposite. But that's kind of my point, really: pro-social behaviour is not guaranteed in…

I'm not worried—I'm just lamenting my own fear and lack of motivation, really. I'll stop now :)

Agreed, there's definitely something to be said for getting a little dirty now and then.

Oh, agreed. But as the article notes, this will one day be available to able bodied people as well. I certainly wouldn't rob the disabled of access to this technology. But if I start living my life by telepresence while I have a perfectly functional biological body? Just shoot me. I have social anxiety and I'm…

Well, sure, but that's a different question. Still, I think there's much to be learned from other cultures—especially the ones so radically different from our own. We may have a lot of great creature comforts, but there's something to be said for cultures that, for example, have no theft or war, and in which…

Yeah, it's silly, but the idea has been with us a long time. As much as pop-culture and History Channel shows perpetuate the myth, it's been part of the zeitgeist in the West as long as there have been urbanized city-states and nations. There's probably some equivalent in the Eastern cultures as well.

Seeing another planet, or another country, sure... but an able-bodied person using telepresence to clean out their garage seems like ridiculous overkill to me.

Fair enough. Don't get me wrong—I wasn't saying that's what people should do, only that that's the likely origin of the myth.

This conflating of evolution with progress happens with people's notions of social development as well. All over Sci-Fi, people seem to think that the cultures of intelligent species always start out primitive and superstitious, and always become more technologically advanced and rational over time. Or that…

I thought the thing with the belt was to prevent the person from biting their own tongue, since a seizure can cause a person's jaw to clench involuntarily.

Meh. It's still a fun show. I think most people know that Mythbusters is more about making things explode than it is about rigorous scientific method.

Indeed! :D

Primitivism and Unilineal Social Evolutionism!

Ah, okay. I wasn't sure what was going on there or who was litigating whom. By Jetfire, I take it you mean the design they used on the Transformers cartoon? As a little kid, around 8 or 10, I had always wondered why the physical toy was "Jetfire" / VF-1 and the cartoon version was "Skyfire," who looked totally…

Damn. Beat me to it!

THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!

This is... fracked-up.

Is this a drive-by Randing? What on earth does this have to do with objectivism?

I remember having fun like this when I worked for a student paper. (Both lazily using images off the net, and photoshopping said images for our own twisted purposes). Oh, it was glorious!

I'm not quite sure of the legalities, but sometime around the time that Robotech went to air in North America, using footage borrowed from Macross, FASA also published their Battletech miniatures wargame, and the related Mechwarrior RPG. Whether they licensed the designs, or just ripped them off, the "Zentradi…